Design of an Interactive Mobile Application for Maternal, Neonatal and Infant Care Support for Tanzania

Abstract

Reducing maternal and infant deaths’ rates in the developing countries, particularly in sub-Sahara Africa, remain a big challenge. Despite efforts by governments, the reductions have been unsatisfactory. To accelerate the reduction in maternal and infant deaths, m-health has been proposed as a viable, economical and effective intervention, able to reach the low income and disadvantaged groups. Mobile phone-based applications are among the m-health interventions that have been found to have positive outcomes for different healthcare challenges, such as improving clinical attendance and skilled delivery, and reducing perinatal mortality. However, the adoption of smartphone-based applications for health in Tanzania has been slow. Some of the likely contributing factors might be low technology exposure by the majority of the population and English language skills’ limitations. In this work, we developed a mobile application for providing interactive support to users, thus complementing other solutions available such as SMS and other smartphone apps. The main advantage of this app is the presence of interactive features that enable patient-provider communication. We adopted the Rapid application development (RAD) model for developing the application. We used UML modeling language tools for designing the application. The mobile application’s technical architecture uses various technologies and system development tools such as PHP programming language for the web application, MySQL database management system and Android Studio mobile application development platform.